Quantification and accuracy of learning through gaze tracking

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityIntroduction: The processes of learning and teaching are fundamentally linked. Therefore, to truly understand how both processes are interconnected we must first define each term separately. Learning can be defined as “the act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge or skills” (Conner 1997). Teaching is much more than the simple delivery of information as it also involves knowing how to grab an audience’s attention and keep them engaged in order for them to truly recall what is being taught to them in a near future. There are several theories that try to explain this complex dynamic by proposing several learning theories and learning styles as to how people learn best. Some popular theories of learning are behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and more recently connectivism. The method a person implements during learning cannot be directly measured via test results. Therefore, we are investigating whether students’ eye movements are potential indicators of how the students learn. Methods: The visual information presented on the computer screen were a series of 6 black and white line drawings of cells that are either oblong or square shaped. The experiment was divided into a Baseline phase, a Training phase, and a Testing phase. The subjects are first asked to visually explore each image during the Baseline phase. Subjects in the Experimental group are then trained to use salient features to identify cell images, which have been assigned a number 1-6 while the Control group received no training but were shown the same numbered cells with no labeled key features. In the Testing phase of the experiment, both groups were asked to identify cells by number. It is during this phase that the subjects see all six images three times but in different orientations: a 180- degree flip, a horizontal flip, and the original or same orientation as the baseline. [TRUNCATED

Cash Providers: Asset Dissemination over Intermediation Chains

Many financial assets are disseminated to final investors via chains of over-the-counter transactions between intermediaries (investors or dealers). We build a model where an agent buying some units of the asset can offer to sell part of them to an OTC partner. Intermediation chains are endogenously formed and impact the asset's market liquidity, its issuance, and who ultimately holds the asset. An increase in the intermediaries' funding liquidity (e.g. a lower haircut on the asset) makes intermediation less necessary but also makes it cheaper to issue the asset, increasing the total volume to be distributed and the number of intermediaries and agents holding the asset. We derive implications on liquidity in OTC markets, the dissemination of ''toxic" assets and the collateral policy of central banks and CCPs

Faciliter la transition des soins des personnes âgées victimes d'AVC: de la réadaptation hospitalière au domicile : revue de littérature

Cette revue de littérature a pour but de mettre en évidence les stratégies infirmières facilitatrices dans un contexte de transition des soins entre la réadaptation en milieu hospitalier et le domicile du patient âgé victime d’AVC

Thirteen polymorphic microsatellite markers for the European green toad Bufo viridis viridis , a declining amphibian species

We report 13 new polymorphic microsatellite markers for the European green toad Bufo viridis viridis (B. viridis subgroup), a declining amphibian from Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe. Diversity at these loci estimated for 19 individuals ranged from two to ten alleles. Most of these primers also cross-amplify in related West-Mediterranean green toad species (Bufo balearicus, B. siculus and B. boulengeri). These microsatellites will be useful for conservation genetics of threatened Bufo viridis viridis populations and evolutionary studies of green toad taxa in secondary contact to examine hybridizatio

Composition corporelle du chien par bioimpédancemétrie : validation d'équations prédictives

Objectives—To develop equations for prediction of total body water (TBW) content in unsedated dogs by combining impedance and morphological variables, and to compare the results of those equations with TBW content determined by deuterium dilution (TBWd). Then to investigate whether these equations were predictive of TBW in various canine breeds.Animals—26 healthy laboratory adult Beagles and 13 healthy adult pet dogs of various breeds.Procedures—TBW content was determined directly by deuterium dilution and indirectly with equations developed from measurements obtained by use of a portable bioelectric impedance device and morphological variables.Results—Impedance and morphological data from 16 of the 26 Beagle dogs were used to determine coefficients for the following 2 equations: TBW1 = –0.019(BL2/R) + –0.199(RC + AC) + 0.996W + 0.081H + 12.31; and TBW2 = 0.048(BL2/R) + –0.144(RC +AC) + 0.777W + 0.066H + 0.031X + 7.47, where AC is abdominal circumference, H is height, BL is body length, R is resistance, RC is rib cage circumference, W is body weight; and X is reactance. Results for TBW1 (R21 = 0.843) and TBW2 (R22 = 0.816) were highly correlated with the TBWd. When the equations were validated with data from the remaining 10 dogs, the respective mean differences between TBWd and TBW1 and TBW2 were 0.17 and 0.11 L, which equated to a nonsignificant underestimation of TBW content by 2.4% and 1.6%, respectively. Applying the two equations to dogs of various breeds showed they are inaccurate to estimate TBW content.Conclusions and Clinical Relevance—Results indicated that impedance and morphological data can be used to accurately estimate TBW content in adult Beagles. This method of estimating TBW content is less expensive and easier to perform than is measurement of TBWd, making it appealing for daily use in veterinary practice. However, the proposed equations need to be modified including morphological parameters such as body size and shape in a first approach. As in humans, morphological-specific equations have to be developed and validated.Objectifs : valider des équations prédictives de la teneur en eau totale (TBW) chez le chien vigile de race beagle par bioimpédancemétrie monofréquence à 50 kHz, en comparaison avec la méthode de référence de dilution au deutérium. Ces équations seront ensuite appliquées à différentes races de chiens afin de vérifier leur validité chez tous les formats de chiens.Animaux : 26 chiens de laboratoire de race beagle et 13 chiens de propriétaires de diverses races. Méthodes : TBW est déterminée par la méthode de référence de dilution à l’eau deutérée et indirectement par l’utilisation d’équations prédictives établies à partir de mesures morphologiques et des mesures électriques (résistance et réactance) obtenues au moyen d’un bioimpédancemètre. Résultats : Les données obtenues chez 16 des 26 beagle a permis d’établir, par régression linéaire, deux équations prédictives de la teneur en eau totale suivantes : TBW1 = –0.019(BL2/R) + –0.199(RC + AC) + 0.996W + 0.081H + 12.31; et TBW2 = 0.048(BL2/R) + –0.144(RC +AC) + 0.777W + 0.066H + 0.031X + 7.47, où AC est le périmètre abdominal, H la hauteur au garrot, BL la longueur du corps, R la résistance, RC le périmètre thoracique , W le poids; and X la réactance. Chez les 10 beagles restants, TBW calculée par les équations TBW1 et TBW2 et celle obtenue par la méthode de dilution sont fortement corrélées (R21 = 0.843 ; R22 = 0.816). La 1ère et la 2ème équations sous-estiment de façon non significative la TBW de respectivement 2.4% and 1.6%. Cependant, l’application de ces formules à des chiens de diverses races ne permet pas l’estimation correcte de la TBW par rapport à la méthode de référence.Conclusion : Cette étude montre qu’il est possible et facile d’utiliser la bioimpédance chez le chien vigile. Deux équations prédictives de la TBW ont été développées et validées chez le beagle mais ne sont pas applicables en l’état à d’autres races de chien. La diversité morphologique des races canines obligent à adapter ces équations en fonction de paramètres de conformation et de format

Rational blinders: strategic selection of risk models and bank capital regulation

The regulatory use of banks' internal models aims at making capital requirements more accurate and reducing regulatory arbitrage, but may also give banks incentives to choose their risk models strategically. Current policy answers to this problem include the use of risk-weight floors and leverage ratios. I show that banks for which those are binding reduce their credit supply, which drives interest rates up, invites other banks to adopt optimistic models and possibly increases aggregate risk in the banking sector. Instead, the strategic use of risk models can be avoided by imposing penalties on banks with low risk-weights when they suffer abnormal losses or bailing out defaulting banks that truthfully reported high risk measures. If such selective bail-outs are not desirable, second-best capital requirements still rely on internal models, but less than in the first-best

Discrete Algorithms - Programming and Collaborative Work: An Experience From the Virtual Classroom Environment

Collaborative learning understands learning as a social process of knowledge construction that goes beyond the individual instance of analysis, conceptualization and appropriation. Discrete Mathematics and Cryptography are two subjects of careers with a systemic and computational profile suitable for the early introduction of programming. With the aim of stimulating student participation and the development of transversal competencies, such as the ability to face a problem, teamwork, programming in a new language, improving oral communication; and in accordance with the line of research in Mathematics Education and training for the improvement of teaching and learning processes in the university classroom, a series of problems were activated in the virtual environment so that students could try to solve them and communicate the results to their peers. The students showed totally adequate resolution qualities, they were timid in their oral communications, but capable of defending the resolution of the problem. That is to say that there is benefit from this type of learning based on the possibilities offered by the new technologies

Profound genetic divergence and asymmetric parental genome contributions as hallmarks of hybrid speciation in polyploid toads.

The evolutionary causes and consequences of allopolyploidization, an exceptional pathway to instant hybrid speciation, are poorly investigated in animals. In particular, when and why hybrid polyploids versus diploids are produced, and constraints on sources of paternal and maternal ancestors, remain underexplored. Using the Palearctic green toad radiation (including bisexually reproducing species of three ploidy levels) as model, we generate a range-wide multi-locus phylogeny of 15 taxa and present four new insights: (i) at least five (up to seven) distinct allotriploid and allotetraploid taxa have evolved in the Pleistocene; (ii) all maternal and paternal ancestors of hybrid polyploids stem from two deeply diverged nuclear clades (6 Mya, 3.1-9.6 Mya), with distinctly greater divergence than the parental species of diploid hybrids found at secondary contact zones; (iii) allotriploid taxa possess two conspecific genomes and a deeply diverged allospecific one, suggesting that genomic imbalance and divergence are causal for their partly clonal reproductive mode; (iv) maternal versus paternal genome contributions exhibit asymmetry, with the maternal nuclear (and mitochondrial) genome of polyploids always coming from the same clade, and the paternal genome from the other. We compare our findings with similar patterns in diploid/polyploid vertebrates, and suggest deep ancestral divergence as a precondition for successful allopolyploidization

Optimal supervisory architecture and financial integration in a banking union

Both in the United States and in the Euro area, bank supervision is the joint responsibility of local and central/federal supervisors. I study how such a system can optimally balance the lower inspection costs of local supervisors with the ability of the central level to internalize cross-border or interstate externalities. The model predicts that centralised supervision endogenously increases market integration and cross-border externalities, further strengthening the need for centralised supervision. This complementarity implies that, for some parameterizations of the model, the economy can be trapped in a local supervision equilibrium with low supervision and integration. In such a case, the forward-looking introduction of a centralized supervisory architecture achieves a superior equilibrium